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The post would have been out earlier today but we’ve just gotten out of a hostage situation here at the Institute. Fall is normally the time when the things that live outside attempt to live inside. They lay in wait all summer slowly pulsating in their lairs, growing larger and meaner and more vicious, as they scheme and design and contrive ways to sneak into your house when you are otherwise occupied. Thus was the case with this most deadly of spiders, the “Black Widow”.

Fortunately we have a spider alarm system installed around the main headquarters and it has been assembled from old submarine Klaxons’, civil defense sirens from the atomic bomb warning systems of the 50’s, and anything else loud and annoying so that if it goes off we have no doubt that we are under attack by murderous arachnoids. Today right at post time that alarm went off. Since we had never tested the system before todays deployment we weren’t sure what the sound level would be. Now we know. In fact everyone within eighty miles now knows what it sounds like. It’s lucky for the spider that it was hard of hearing otherwise it would have died right on the spot, melted into a little puddle of arachnid juices by the standing waves. It did kill one of our chickens but we’re not certain if that was the sound waves or the chicken got a good look at the spider and just keeled over.

I immediately sent out gullible, I mean dedicated volunteers to obtain info on what was causing the breach. Immediately reports came in giving the size of the intruder as anything from four to eleven feet in diameter and that it was a psychotic, ravenous monster trying to rip the patio doors off their hinges. This sounded serious, so I sent some of our lower IQ researchers who are our shock troops whenever danger threatens, to confront the beast and lure it away from the entrance until we could get it into rifle range. Unfortunately we haven’t heard from those folks yet but I imagine they’re just taking a break and will soon be back in touch. One of the supervisors who normally do not place themselves in any high risk situations, quickly glanced over the railing and said there was a shoe down there and what looked like an elbow but no sign of people. Since she could not determine if it was a human elbow we still have hope that these folks have simply run away and hidden themselves down in the bunker in the valley like they have before, the cowards.

Something had to be done, and quickly, before things got out of hand. Luckily we have had a pest control agent on standby since we opened the Institute to visitors back in ’09 and we immediately put him to work. After staking out a young pony as bait we sent the sniper, I mean, pest exterminator up on the roof and as soon as the arachnid made a move for the pony he opened up with his Mauser Mod. 1918 13.2 mm Tankgewehr  or Mauser 1918 TuF Gewehr as its known in the trade. Even then it took 35 rounds in the kill zone right behind the mandibles before he dropped it. We also learned to let these beasts lay there for an hour or so after shooting them in case they lash out in their death throes, as one of our more backward interns learned to his dismay. We unfortunately were unable to pry his leg out of the jaws of this creature but on the bright side our workman’s comp is paid up.

The rest of the day has been spent quartering the thing up and hauling the remains to our commissary storage unit. Supposedly there are ways to fix these things if you know the tricks involved. We have a chef coming in from Japan who has had a lot experience fixing poisonous things to eat so that may offset some of the damage caused by this whole episode. We are also setting up contingency plans so that if we have similar episodes in the future it will not interfere with our posting schedule. Thank you for your patience and understanding.